Long-time experience with a dedicated database for a chest pain observation unit

Chest pain observation units (CPU) are specialized emergency units for the optimal medical management of patients with acute chest pain. Electronic data collection in the CPU must reflect the rapid patient access and emergency treatment pathways in the CPU. Therefore a dedicated relational database was developed for the CPU. The specialized database reflected the clinical pathway of a chest pain patient from admission to discharge. All clinical data can be inserted in symptom orientated database forms. During structured data input, the database calculates several symptom related risk scores. The 12 channel ECG is sent by wireless transmission to the database. All clinical laboratory blood values are sent immediately using a HL 7 software interface. The general experience with the symptom and clinical pathway orientated dedicated CPU database confirms that it provides optimal support for the clinical triage and initial treatment tasks in a specialized emergency CPU.